Stonehenge

by Bernard Cornwell

  Saban grabbed his brother’s hand to stop him, but Camaban shook him off. “This is how it is done!” Camaban called above the seething fury of the gale. “And it must be done properly! Don’t you understand? It must be done properly!”

  And suddenly Saban did understand. Aurenna must do her duty and walk to the fire, and if there was no fire then that was not of her doing. So Saban stepped away and watched as his brother slit down Aurenna’s long robe. The heavy wool flapped wildly as it was cut away and then Camaban tugged at the soaking cloth and tugged again so that it fell to Aurenna’s feet and she was naked.

  She was naked because that was how a bride went to her husband and now was the time for Aurenna to go to Slaol. Camaban shrieked at her, “Walk! Walk!” And Aurenna did walk, though it was hard because the elements were fighting against her slender body, but still, and still as if in a trance, she forced herself forward, and Camaban followed a pace behind, urging her on as the horrified priests watched from the temple’s stone ring.

  Some smoke or steam still came over the cliff top to be snatched into instant nothingness. Saban walked alongside Aurenna, but keeping outside the stones marking the sacred avenue, and the wind seemed fiercer still as she neared the edge. Her feet slipped on the wet turf, her soaked hair streamed behind her, but she obediently bent forward and thrust into the storm. “Go on!” Camaban screamed at her. “Go on!”

  At the cliff’s edge Saban saw that there was still a remnant of fire lurking in the timber. The pile of wood had been huge, and it would have been lit at midday and fed with fuel so that the heat grew ever more intense, but the wind and spray and rain had cowed the fire, had beaten it down and reduced it to wet, black and charred logs, but at its heart, deep down, some embers still fought against the tempest.

  “There!” Camaban shouted exultantly. “There!” And Saban and Aurenna both lifted their heads to see that the southwestern horizon was not all black, but was slit with one small wound of red. The sun god was there. He was watching and his blood was showing against the clouds. “Now jump!” Camaban screamed at Aurenna.

  A hammer of thunder deafened the world. Lightning flickered along the cliffs. “Jump!” Camaban shouted again, and Aurenna screamed with fear or perhaps with triumph as she stepped off the cliff’s edge to fall among the rain- and sea-soaked remnants of the fire. She staggered as she landed, her balance upset by the gale and the black timbers that shattered under her feet, and then she fell against the cliff face and Saban saw a last eddy of smoke and suddenly there was no fire. Aurenna had done as she was supposed to do, and the god had rejected her.

  Saban jumped down to the ledge. He pulled off his tunic and forced it over Aurenna’s head. She seemed incapable of raising her arms and so he dragged the tunic down her body to cover her from the rain. It was then she looked up into his face and he put his bare arms around her and held her tight, and she, exhausted, sobbed on his shoulder above the storm-flayed sea.

  But she lived. She had done what she was supposed to do, and disaster had come to Sarmennyn.

  The tempest began to lose its force. The sea still pounded on the cliffs and shattered white into the darkening air, but the storm settled into mere gusts, and the rain fell instead of flew.

  Saban helped Aurenna to the cliff top. She had pushed her arms into the tunic’s sleeves and now clung to him as if in a dream. “She walked!” Camaban was shouting at the priests.

  Haragg had come down from the hill and he added his voice to Camaban’s. “She walked!”

  Kereval looked heartbroken. The fate of the sun bride was reckoned to foretell the tribe’s fortune in the coming year and no one had ever seen a bride walk to the fire, then walk away.

  Scathel shrieked in agony and in his fury he seized a spear from one of the warriors and advanced on Camaban. “It was you!” he shouted. “It was your doing! You brought the storm! You were seen in Malkin’s shrine last night! You brought the storm!” With that a dozen of the warriors joined the high priest and advanced on Camaban with murder in their faces.

  Saban had dropped his spear to help Aurenna and now she clung to him so he could do nothing to save his brother – but Camaban needed no help.

  He simply lifted one hand.

  In the hand was a golden lozenge. The large lozenge that had come from Sannas’s hut.

  Scathel stopped. He stared at the scrap of gold, then held up a hand to stop the spearmen.

  “You want me to throw the treasure into the sea?” Camaban asked. He opened his other hand to show eleven of the small lozenges. “I don’t mind!” He laughed suddenly, a mad laughter. “What is Erek’s gold to me? What is it to you?” he asked in a shriek. “You let it go, Scathel! You could not even guard your treasures! So let it go again! Give it back to the sea.” And he turned and made as if to hurl the treasures into the lessening wind.

  “No!” Scathel pleaded.

  Camaban turned back. “Why not? You lost it, Scathel! You miserable piece of dried-up lizard dung, you lost Erek’s gold! And I have brought some back.” He held the scraps of gold high in the air. “I am a sorcerer, Scathel of Sarmennyn,” he said in a strong voice, “I am a sorcerer and you are dirt beneath my feet. I made the spirits of the air and the spirits of the wind travel to Cathallo to rescue this gold, gold which has come to Sarmennyn even though you would break the agreement your chief made with my brother. You, Scathel of Sarmennyn, you have defied Erek! He wants his temple moved and his glory restored, and what does Scathel of Sarmennyn do? He stands in the god’s way like a drooling hog before a stag. You oppose Erek! So why should I give you this gold that Erek took from you? It will go to the sea.” He stood on the cliff above the broken fire and once again threatened to hurl the gold into the seething waves.

  “No!” Scathel shouted. He was gazing at the gold as though it were Erek himself. Tears were running down his gaunt face and a look of pure wonder was in his eyes. He dropped to his knees. “Please, no!” he begged Camaban.

  “You will move a temple to Ratharryn?” Camaban asked.

  “I will move a temple to Ratharryn,” Scathel said humbly, still kneeling.

  Camaban pointed northward. “In your madness, Scathel,” he said, “in the mountains, you built a double ring of stone. That is the temple I want.”

  “Then you shall have it,” Scathel said.

  “It is agreed?” Camaban asked Kereval.

  “It is agreed,” Kereval said.

  Camaban still held the large lozenge high. “Erek rejected the bride because you rejected his ambition! Erek wants his temple at Ratharryn!” Folk had crept out of shelter and were listening to Camaban who stood tall and terrible on the dark cliff’s edge where the wind lifted his long black hair and rattled the bones tied to its ends. “Nothing is done for nothing,” he shouted. “Losing your gold was a tragedy, but a tragedy with meaning, and what does it mean? It means Erek would increase his power! He would spread his light to the world’s center! He will reclaim his proper bride, the earth itself! He will bring us life and happiness, but only if you do what he wishes. And if you move his temple to Ratharryn then you will all be like gods.” He slumped, exhausted. “You will all be like gods …” he said again.

  “Thank you for saving her,” Saban said, an arm about Aurenna.

  “Don’t be absurd,” Camaban said wearily. Then he walked forward and knelt in front of Scathel. He laid the gold, all twelve pieces of it, on the grass between them, and the two men embraced as though they were long-lost brothers. Both wept and both swore to do the sun god’s bidding.

  So Aurenna lived, Camaban had won and Ratharryn would have its temple.

  Chapter 11

  Scathel did not know what to do with Aurenna: she had walked the path to the fire and lived, and no bride had ever done that. Scathel’s first instinct was to kill her, while Kereval wanted to take her as his own bride, but Camaban, whose authority now stood almost unchallenged in Sarmennyn, decided she must go free. “Erek permitted her to live,” he told the tribe,
“and that means he must have a use for her. If we kill her or if we force her to a marriage, then we defy Erek.”

  And so Aurenna walked north to where her own folk lived and she stayed there through the winter, but in the spring she came south again and brought two of her brothers with her.

  The three came down the river on a boat made from willow branches that had been bent into a bowl and covered with hides. Aurenna was dressed in deerskins and had her golden hair tied at the nape of her neck. She landed at Kereval’s settlement in the evening, and the sinking sun glowed on her face as she walked through the huts where the folk shrank from her. Some believed she was still a goddess, others thought her rejection by Erek had turned her into a malign spirit; all feared her power.

  She stooped at the entrance of Haragg’s hut. Saban was alone inside, chipping flints into arrowheads. He liked the task, for it was satisfying to see the sharp slivers emerge from the knobs of rough stone, but then the light by which he was working was blotted out and he looked up, irritated, and did not recognize Aurenna for she was merely a shape against the light outside. “Haragg is not here,” he said.

  “I came to see you,” Aurenna answered, and that was when Saban recognized her and his heart was suddenly too full for him to speak. He had dreamed of seeing her again but had feared he never would; now she had come. She bent to enter the hut and sat opposite him while her two brothers squatted beyond the door. “I have prayed to Erek,” she said gravely, “and he has told me to help you move the temple. It is my fate.”

  “Your fate? To move stone?” Saban almost smiled.

  “To be with you,” Aurenna said and gazed at him anxiously as though he might refuse her help.

  Saban did not know what to say. “To be with me?” he asked nervously, wondering exactly what she meant.

  “If you will have me,” she said, and blushed, though it was too dim in the hut for Saban to see it. “I prayed to Erek all last winter,” Aurenna went on in a small voice, “and I asked him why he had not taken me. Why had he shamed my family? And I spoke with our priest and he gave me a cup of liquid to drink and I dreamed the wild dream and Erek told me that I am to be the mother of the guardian of his new temple at Ratharryn.”

  “You are to be a mother?” Saban asked, hardly daring to believe what she so calmly proposed.

  “If you will have me,” she said humbly.

  “I have dreamed of little else,” Saban confessed.

  Aurenna smiled. “Good,” she said, “then I will be with you and my brothers can move your stones.” She explained that the brothers, Caddan and Makin, were accustomed to bringing great lumps of rock from the splintered mountain tops to the lower land where the families broke the boulders and made the axe heads. “And I hear,” she went on earnestly, “that you are finding the task of moving the stones difficult?”

  It was not Saban who was finding the task difficult, but Haragg, for Kereval had placed the trader in charge of moving the temple and the big man seemed perplexed by the problems. He had spent all the previous summer and autumn travelling back and forth between Scathel’s temple and the chief’s settlement and he had still not decided how the stones were to be shifted or, indeed, whether they could be moved at all. He worried at the problem, listened to suggestions, then fell into indecision. Lewydd and Saban were sure they knew how it could be done, but Haragg was nervous of taking their advice. “It can be done,” Saban now told Aurenna, “but only when Haragg decides to trust Lewydd and me.”

  “I shall tell him to trust you,” Aurenna said. “I shall tell him of my dream, and he will obey the god.”

  Aurenna’s return unsettled the priests for they feared her power might rival theirs, so Saban made her a hut on the other river bank, closer to the sea, and there he and Aurenna lived and folk came from all across Sarmennyn, and even from the lands touching Sarmennyn’s borders, for her touch. Fishermen brought their boats for her blessing and barren women came to be granted the gift of children. Aurenna disclaimed any power, yet still they came and some even built their own huts close to hers until the place became known as Aurenna’s settlement. Lewydd, the spearman who was a fisherman’s son, also came to live there, bringing a wife, and Aurenna’s brothers made their homes next to his and took themselves wives. Haragg and Cagan came also and Haragg bowed to Aurenna and seemed relieved when she instructed him that Erek had decreed that Saban and Lewydd were to move the temple stones. She told Haragg, “My brothers will move the stones down the mountains, Saban will make boats to carry the stones and Lewydd will take the boats to Ratharryn.”

  Haragg accepted Aurenna’s word and thereafter joined Camaban who was traveling all through Sarmennyn and preaching his vision, for the task of moving the stones would need the help of the tribe and so the folk must be convinced. At the beginning of time, Camaban said, the gods had danced together and the folk of Earth had lived in their happy shadow, but men and women had begun to love the moon goddess and the earth goddess more than Erek himself and so Erek had broken the dance. Yet if Erek could be brought back then the old happiness would be restored. There would be no more winter, no more sickness and no more orphans crying in the dark. Haragg preached the same theme and the promises were received with astonishment and hope. In just one year the tribe’s sullen opposition to moving a temple was turned into enthusiastic support.

  It was one thing to persuade Kereval’s people to move the stones, but it was another to make sure Lengar accepted the temple and so Scathel, who was now Camaban’s sworn ally, went to Ratharryn in the spring. “Tell Lengar that the temple we are sending him is a war temple,” Camaban instructed the high priest.

  “But it isn’t!” Scathel protested.

  “But if he believes it is a war temple,” Camaban explained patiently, “then he will be eager to receive it. Tell him that if he exchanges the gold for the stones then it will grant his spearmen invincibility. Tell him it will make him the greatest warrior of all the world. Tell him that songs of his prowess will ring through the years forever.”

  So Scathel went and told Lengar the lies and Lengar was so awed by the tall, gaunt priest and by his promises of invincibility that he actually yielded a half-dozen more of the small lozenges, though he said nothing of the ones Derrewyn had stolen.

  When Scathel returned from Ratharryn he brought Galeth’s son, Mereth, to be Saban’s helper. Mereth was a year younger than Saban, and he had inherited his father’s strength and knowledge. He could shape wood, lift stone, raise a temple pole or chip flint, and do all those things with dexterity, speed and skill. Like his father he had huge hands and a generous heart, though when he came to Sarmennyn that heart was burdened with news for Saban’s mother had died.

  Saban wept for her, listening as Mereth described how they had carried her corpse to the Death Place. “We broke pots for her in Lahanna’s temple,” Mereth said. “Lengar wants to pull that temple down.”

  “He wants to destroy Lahanna’s temple?” Saban was amazed.

  “Cathallo worships Lahanna, so Ratharryn isn’t allowed to any more,” Mereth explained, then added that Derrewyn had rallied the people of Cathallo.

  And that too was news to Saban. Derrewyn had escaped to Cathallo and taken a child in her belly. Saban pressed Mereth for whatever detail he could reveal, though Mereth knew little more than he had already told. Saban felt a fierce pleasure at the news and that, in turn, made him feel guilty about Aurenna. “Derrewyn must have had the baby by now?” he suggested.

  “I heard nothing,” Mereth said.

  Mereth and Saban made sledges and boats, while Caddan and Makin, Aurenna’s brothers, went to the mountain to move the stones of Scathel’s temple from their high valley. They used sledges, each one twice the length of a man’s height and half as broad, made of two stout oak runners spanned by baulks of timber. Saban made a dozen sledges that first year, and Lewydd carried them up the river from Aurenna’s settlement on a boat made of two hulls joined by timber beams. The river twisted through the woods p
ast Kereval’s settlement and into the bleaker country where the trees were sparse and windbent, then wound northward until it became too shallow for Lewydd’s boat, but by then it was under the shadow of the mountain where the temple stood.

  Aurenna’s brothers needed scores of men to move the stones, but the folk of Sarmennyn had been inspired by Camaban and Haragg and there was no shortage of helpers. The women sang as the men dragged the sledges up the mountain. The first of the temple’s stones were rocked loose from their sockets, then lowered onto the sledges. Aurenna’s brothers began with the smaller stones for they could be lifted by a mere dozen men and two such stones could be placed on one sledge. A dozen men dragged the first sledge to the high valley’s lip and there the sledge tipped over the edge and it needed thirty men, not to pull it, but to stop it from running loose down the steep slope. It took a whole day to guide the first two stones down the slope, and another full day to drag the sledge from the mountain’s foot to the river’s bank, and it would take another two years to bring the whole temple down the hill, and in all that time only one sledge ran out of control to thunder down the slope, tip and shatter so that its pillar broke into a thousand pieces. The largest stones, which needed thirty or forty men to lift, were stored beside the river on their sledges while the smaller pillars, which could be manhandled by a dozen men, were left on the grass.

  It was Lewydd who would carry the stones to Ratharryn, for the temple would float for most of its journey and he was a seaman. Lewydd devised the boats. In the first year, after the first few stones had been brought down the mountain, he loaded two of the smaller stones onto the same boat that had carried the sledges upstream. He manned the two hulls with a dozen paddlers, then set off downriver. The boat moved fast, carried by the current, and Lewydd was confident enough to take the stones to where the river widened into the sea. He wanted to discover how the boat rode the larger waves, but no sooner had the first green sea broken on the bows than the weight of the stones pushed the two hulls outward and the boat split into two and the pillars sank. Haragg cried aloud, claiming the work was being done all wrong, but Camaban assured the men watching from the cliffs that Dilan, the sea god, had exacted his price and that no more stones would be lost. A heifer was sacrificed on the beach and its blood allowed to run into the water and a moment later three porpoises were seen offshore and Scathel declared that Dilan had accepted the sacrifice.